Improved techniques for detecting windshear are necessary to improve air safety. An aircraft encountering windshear during take-off or landing is in great danger. However, the danger may be substantially reduced if the pilot immediately takes remedial action when windshear is experienced, e.g., by initiating a rapid climb on take off or aborting a landing and making a go around.
Systems for detecting windshear experienced by an airplane exist, e.g., a windshear detection system which is integrated into the GPWS (Ground Proximity Warning System) Mk V and Mk VII and the Enhanced GPWS Mk V and Mk VII manufactured by the assignee of the present application. However, these and other existing on-board windshear detection systems require input of aircraft normal acceleration (an) and longitudinal acceleration (ax). On many types of aircraft, these acceleration signals can only be provided by installing two high quality (and relatively expensive) precision accelerometers on the aircraft.
Since windshear presents a danger to all aircraft it is important to provide on-board windshear detection systems which are available to aircraft which do not have high quality accelerometers on board.